


i am a strange new kind of in between thing aren't i

by JewFlexive



Series: blue skies and sunshine (aren't guaranteed) [2]
Category: Tangled (2010), Tangled: The Series (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Child Abandonment, Episode: s02e21 Destinies Collide, Eugene Is Not So Forgiving, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, The Dark Kingdom, Written before season 3, and that's okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 13:27:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18605455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JewFlexive/pseuds/JewFlexive
Summary: Eugene is not a weapon. He is not a prince. He is a scrappy orphan who plays at being a rogue. He is a man desperately and entirely in love with a woman he doesn’t think he’ll ever deserve. He is Lance’s best friend and Max’s partner, Angry and Red’s fun uncle and Shorty’s baby-sitter. He is a soldier who is grieving and confused because his brothers and sisters in arms have a bad habit of deciding to switch sides mid-battle. He is a lonely little boy who never had a mommy or a daddy all his own. He is Eugene Fitzherbert, unlikely hero of Corona, the man who found (and was found by) The Lost Princess, and Edmund will have no piece of him.{After Cassandra leaves, Eugene has a lot to say to the man who sent him away.}





	i am a strange new kind of in between thing aren't i

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of thoughts about Edmund and Eugene. These are some of them.
> 
> Please enjoy, and remember that comments are always welcome!

_**For I am a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren’t I, not at home with the dead nor with the living** _

After Cassandra runs off in a flurry of blue light and heart-wrenching faithlessness, Rapunzel is inconsolable.

Usually, Eugene would be all over that. Usually, he’d haul her into his lap and tell her stories with his lips pressed to the top of her head, the old words curving around strands of her golden hair. If it were really bad, he’d rock her until she’d finally fall asleep, singing half-remembered songs he had learned in the orphanage. But when she needs it most, when her heart is breaking in a way that he has not seen since she stood over what was left of Gothel, he can’t bring himself to move.

If Cassandra were here, she’d tell him to get off his ass and be there for here, his own problems be damned. But since Cassandra is the one who caused this, Eugene has made a unilateral decision to ignore everything she’s ever said.

He closes his eyes as his mind wanders to Cassandra and Lance takes a seat next to Rapunzel and takes her hand in silent commiseration. Eugene studiously ignores the dirty look his old friend is shooting him over Shorty’s head. There is so much else for him to cry over, and Cassandra’s betrayal is barely registering.

Suddenly, the ruined antechamber is too stifling, too small. With a huff, Eugene stands up so quickly his head starts to spin and his vision tinges white. His chair clatters to the floor as he pushes it behind him. Everyone in the room flinches at the sudden sound.

“William!” The Dark Kingdom’s king (not Father, never Father) exclaims, taking a step towards him. “What do you think––”

“My name,” Eugene corrects through his gritted teeth. “Is Eugene Fitzherbert.”

Rapunzel is looking at him with wide, tearful green eyes, and it’s too much. The world is spinning, and the last time Eugene felt so utterly panicked, he was sixteen and Stalyan was tying him to the bed. His lungs are shrinking, and he thinks he may finally understand what the Captain used to say about him. About how there was something rotten inside of Eugene, something terrible, and it was only luck that it hadn’t consumed him entirely.

“No,” Edmund insists, and Eugene has to wonder what the kind of madness he is heir to. There is a queer light in Edmund’s eyes that puts Eugene on edge, and the saddest part is that Eugene can’t ever know where the true man ends and the last twenty-five years in solitude begin. “You are William Tenebris, heir to the Kingdom of Noctisa, and you are my son.”

Flynn Rider did a lot of things. He lied and cheated. He tricked and stole more coin than any other bandit of his age. Once, he and Lance had estimated that Flynn would steal more money than the main isle of Arendelle was worth by the time he was thirty, and it hadn’t been an unreasonable hypothesis. Flynn Rider was ruthless-- he’d do anything to get his mark.

But Flynn wasn’t violent. Eugene had taken a look at the charges he’d been pardoned of, that second week in the palace when the king’s good will had begun to run out, when Eugene had been seriously worried that he’d be asked to leave. There were dozens, of course, but not one of them included assault. Flynn Rider was a master thief–– In and out before anyone needed to be hurt. He’d managed it only by not having any temper to speak of. He was cool, he was calm, he was collected. Getting angry only served to get in the way.

But now, looking at the man before him, Eugene feels something within him snap, and it feels like the time he’d overestimated his agility and broken his femur aiding Lance in a getaway. The quick pain of it is almost liquid, warm and rancid as it spreads through his entire body. Eugene has been angry before. He would have cut down Gothel where she stood had he the chance, would have shaken Varian until his teeth rattled. Even imagining someone hurting Rapunzel makes his blood boil.

But all of that is nothing compared to the rage Eugene feels now. His hands are shaking. Some distant part of him is telling him to rein it in, at least in front of Rapunzel, who is hurt and too pale and needs him, but Eugene has spent his whole life alone and this man, this poor excuse for a father, has the gall to claim he never actually was.

“That’s not my name,” he insists in an icy monotone, and this is how he knows Lance will be able to tell that he is royally pissed. “You don’t get to call me that name. You don’t get to call me _son_. You certainly don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Come now––” Edmund cajoles, but Eugene doesn’t bother in listening. His life was near perfect now and ordered and entirely _his_ , and who is Edmund to claim to have a right to a part of it? Who is Edmund to call himself Eugene’s father?

“You left me,” he says, and part of him, he knows, is small and scared again. A part of Eugene never left the orphanage, and usually, he can keep a handle on that part, but now that bitter little boy with bruises and worn out shoes is all Eugene’s sees in his mind’s eye. That boy never had to exist, but Edmund had made sure he had. “No, no, you _sent me away_ , and you couldn’t even be bothered to send me somewhere safe! You were here, alive and well, while I grew up in The Fitzherbert Home for Abandoned Youth with a leaky roof and ten other boys.”

Edmund’s eyes widen. “I told the Brotherhood to get you to safety!”

“Safety is relative, apparently,” Eugene informs Edmund coldly. “And you shouldn’t be surprised. You charged the Brotherhood with protecting the moonstone. You didn’t charge _anyone_ with protecting your own blood.”

Edmund’s jaw is hanging wide open, and Eugene knows a kinder person would simply leave, that a better person wouldn’t cut so deep. Perhaps a more forgiving person would open up their arms to a long-lost father. But Eugene has had it with this journey, with the shit everyone keeps talking about destinies and faith. Rapunzel and Lance were all Eugene ever needed, but now everything that was good and pure in his life is twisted beyond recognition. Even while wearing a pseudonym, Eugene always knew exactly who he was, what he did, and why he did it. But this man, despite everything, claims that he is William, a prince whose sole purpose is to be a long-awaited weapon.

Eugene is not a weapon. He is not a prince. He is a scrappy orphan who plays at being a rogue. He is a man desperately and entirely in love with a woman he doesn’t think he’ll ever deserve. He is Lance’s best friend and Max’s partner, Angry and Red’s fun uncle and Shorty’s baby-sitter. He is a soldier who is grieving and confused because his brothers and sisters in arms have a bad habit of deciding to switch sides mid-battle. He is a lonely little boy who never had a mommy or a daddy of his own. He is Eugene Fitzherbert, unlikely hero of Corona, the man who found (and was found by) The Lost Princess, and Edmund will have no piece of him.

“Tommy’s parents died of plague,” he tells Edmund. “Harry’s mother abandoned him after his father was executed. Charlie ran away from a dad who beat him senseless whenever he was sober enough to punch straight. But you know what?”

He pauses, locking eyes with Lance. His old friend is notoriously sentimental (an unhelpful trait in a crook if there ever was one, but hey, Eugene’s just as guilty), but for once, there is nothing but stony satisfaction reflected in his eyes. Lance knows Eugene down deep to his bones, understands him in a type of gritty detail that Rapunzel, despite her love for him, will never be able to fathom. Maybe Rapunzel will think Eugene is being cruel. Hell, maybe Eugene _is_ being cruel. But Lance will not stop him in this fight, and he will pick up the pieces when it’s over without complaint.

“I was jealous of them,” Eugene’s voice breaks despite his best efforts, quivering like a leaf in autumn. “I was jealous of those boys, did you know that? Because even though they had next to nothing, they at least knew where they came from. They knew their birthdays. They knew their last names. They knew what city they hailed from. What did I know?”

Edmund makes a sound that sounds close to a sob, but Eugene’s vision is cloudy with tears of his own and his ears are ringing, so he can’t be certain.

“You are my son,” Edmund says again, as if by repeating the statement he could make it true. He reaches out with his good arm, his palm open. If Eugene were weaker, perhaps he might have taken it. But Eugene is tough as nails and twice as stubborn, and he is deeply, intensely afraid that if he takes that hand, he will lose hold of the anger that he knows he deserves to feel. If Eugene took that hand, he’d never let Edmund go. “My baby boy, please, you said––”

“I said what I had to say to get you to work with me,” the lie-that-isn’t-really comes easily, and in the corner of his eye, he sees Lance nod approvingly. “You learn to do that when you grow up the way I did.”

They are at a standstill. Max’s head is bowed, Lance is stoic, and Rapunzel, bless her, is inching towards him, worrying her lip as she undoubtedly is trying to devise a way to diffuse the situation.

(Eugene loves her so much it physically hurts him. Rapunzel is good and beautiful and clever, and if there is ever a place that she does not belong it is this crypt of a palace, this ruin of a kingdom. Old posters and fractured statuary cover the place, and she does not deserve to have to play a part in this gauche family tragedy that Eugene has inexplicably found himself tangled in.)

“You’re not my father,” he says finally, looking Edmund in the eye, really looking. They’re his eyes, no doubt, but Eugene reckons he didn’t inherit much else from the man. He risks a quick look at the portrait above him, at the woman who he supposes must be his mother. She is radiant, even confined to canvas, and is perhaps the only thing in the entire kingdom that doesn’t make Eugene’s stomach turn. “Any father worthy of the name wouldn’t have sent his son away. And you _sent me away_."

“What was I supposed to do?” Edmund asks him desperately, forlornly surveying the room. “If you had stayed, we might have been in even more danger.”

Eugene doesn’t even blink. He turns towards the door and begins walking but before he can leave, he finds himself leaning on the doorpost.

“We would have been together,” he says, and that, they all know, is the crux of the matter. His back is still to the group, but he can just imagine the look on Rapunzel’s face. “And that would have made up for everything.”

He looks over his shoulder one last time. He surveys the statue remains, and can almost imagine the grandeur that must have been commonplace in a palace such as this. He looks at the portrait once more, and takes strength from the softness obvious in the Queen’s small smile. When Eugene had imagined having a mother, late at night when the matrons were all asleep and the boys were all pretending to do the same, he imagined her with a smile like that, the type of smile that would make every hardship and terror worth it. He waited for years to somehow find it. Twenty-five years later, he isn’t even sure he wants it, and that terrifies him.

Eugene’s eyes wander over to the man who calls him William with such sorrow in the three syllables, a man who talks aloud to himself to fill silences, a man whose only companions have been birds and old broadsheets of a long lost son. If Edmund had sent a lantern or two, if his first instinct at meeting him had been an embrace rather than a quest, maybe Eugene could forgive him. But for now, all Eugene can do is try his best not to hate him.

* * *

Later, Rapunzel finds him in his bedroll, three rooms away. She climbs in and kisses him hard, all tongue and teeth. His tears mingle with her own, and it is both the worst thing and the most beautiful. Because Rapunzel, better than anyone, maybe, knows how this is. She knows that there is still a bitter little boy inside of him that loves Edmund instinctively, in the primal, needy sort of way that Eugene has seen once or twice in the way that Red and Angry look up at him. She knows that Eugene is seconds away from folding in on himself, from running to Edmund and begging him not leave again, to love him enough to stay.

“I love you,” she tells him, kissing his tears away and threading her small hands through his hair. He whimpers and curls his body around her, propriety be damned. She lets him, holding him close to her breast and squeezing. She knows enough not to expect a response and he adores her for it. “I love you.”

He sobs, then, for a lot of things. For the lonely kid who grew up knowing his parents hadn’t bothered to name him, let alone keep him. For the starving street urchin who threw in with the Baron and ran off with considerably less than he started out with. For the jaded sonofabitch who somehow managed to claw his way up to heroism.

He sobs for the prince he could have been, for the mother he never knew. He sobs for Edmund, who he can’t love, because loving such a father would tear Eugene in two.

“I love you,” Rapunzel whispers, and somehow, despite everything falling to pieces around them, he feels lighter. “I love you.”

Eugene nods and closes his eyes. He has no idea who he is anymore, not really, but he knows that whoever he may be, there is no version of him that will not love this woman with everything he has.

For now, that will have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Some quick notes:
> 
> William means "helm" or "protector," and since we have no reason to believe that Eugene was a Fitzherbert at birth, we have no reason to believe he was a Eugene either. Also, with the destiny Edmund thinks Eugene had, I thought the name was fitting.
> 
> Tenebris (meaning "dark" in Latin) is my head cannon for the House/Dynasty name of the rulers of the Dark Kingdom.
> 
> Noctisa (a play off of the word "night" in Latin) is just a way for me to invent a better name for a kingdom than "The Dark Kingdom" because honestly.


End file.
